Electrospinning: A versatile strategy for mimicking natural creatures

Natural creatures have developed fascinating structures and properties through billions of years of evolution, which provide valuable sources of inspiration for the human being to prepare specific structural materials. The unique properties of creatures resulting from their special hierarchical structures have attracted increasing attention for the fabrication of biomimetic materials to realize various technological applications. As a simple and versatile strategy, the electrospinning technique holds great potential for fabricating biomimetic nanofibrous materials with large surface area, high porosity, and ease of surface functionalization. In this review, we summarized the recent progress in the design and fabrication of electrospun biomimetic nanofibrous materials inspired by natural creatures including lotus leaf, silver ragwort leaf, water strider leg, polar bear hair, spider web and honeycomb. In addition, the potential applications of the as-prepared electrospun biomimetic materials in self-cleaning, oil/water separation, air filtration, thermal insulation were systematically analyzed. Finally, we discussed the current challenges and future developments in the fabrication of electrospun biomimetic materials.